


The Fall of a Century

by Daffadowndilly



Category: Interview With the Vampire (1994)
Genre: Contemplative, Immortals, Interview With The Vampire - Freeform, M/M, Pining, Vampire Chronicles, Vampires, based entirely on the movie lbr, idk - Freeform, im out of practice with this style so please forgive if it's terrible, what can i say i rewatched it recently
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-05
Updated: 2017-12-05
Packaged: 2019-02-11 02:45:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12925650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daffadowndilly/pseuds/Daffadowndilly
Summary: Armand reflects on eternal life, mortality, and Louis.





	The Fall of a Century

 

He was old, so very old, and he knew what happened to “immortals” as the ages passed. The galloping years beat out a strange, endless rhythm. Human men were drowned in that pulsing sound, swept up and driven forward until they were worn down and, finally, drug under. Vampires were foolish enough to think themselves immune to the doom of time’s unfaltering drumbeat, but Armand knew better.

He had seen it too many times, could see it coming for him as it had come for every vampire he had ever known. He called it the Third Death, and it had begun to feel as inevitable, as inescapable, as human mortality.

There was a certain irony in that vampire law forbade the killing of an immortal, when death dominated their experience from the moment they first tasted of it.

They call it second birth, when the heart stops and the senses quicken, but it is not rebirth: it is the first death. The body aches and seizes, scrambles for air. The heart races and then slows to a stop, the blood stills and thickens, the skin grows cold. The human body dies.

When the body rises again it is no longer human. It is stronger, faster; it hears and sees in ways that no human body could ever see or hear, and with it rises a hunger like no other desire any earthbound creature can know. It must be satisfied, and in its satiation is another ending: the death of the soul. When killing brings peace, when guilt itself dies, there is nothing human left. This is the second death.

Decades pass, and the immortals think themselves safe. They think that the blood they drink, the humans they hunt, are the only deaths the universe holds for them any more, but they are wrong. As the years flicker past the earth changes. Civilization grows, technology advances, language transforms, beliefs evolve, and each generation of people are further removed from the last. They grow ever more interconnected within themselves, ever more detached from the past. The vampire watches from the shadows. At first, he adapts, but as time marches on the world spins away from him. He stands, unmoving and ageless.

 

Armand was four hundred years old. He had been young in the time of Louis XI; everything was different then. Over the centuries he had lost all ability to relate to others. Humans, even vampires, were all so far out of his reach he couldn’t see them clearly, they were blurred as though they moved too fast. The world turned and they spun in time with it, like dancers moving to music, the rhythm of which was alien to Armand.

Like the spider spoken of by the New World’s great poet1 , he had begun to search, blindly reaching for a connection, casting out “filament, filament, filament,” to no avail. A whole theatre of his own kind, a city thriving with life, a whole continent of humans danced before him, but he could touch none of them.

His young vampires, whom he had hoped could be his bridge to the world, disgusted him. He could not love them, and they had detached themselves so completely from humanity and the world that they could be of no use to him anyway. They danced in defiance to time’s marching tempo until they could no longer hear it, and they were too young and foolhardy to know how dangerous that was.

Then, He appeared. He was young when he was given the dark gift, and he had lived in his second life for a scant few decades, but there was an age about him that intrigued Armand. He came with questions, many of which even Armand, old as he was, could not answer.

The dark gift was different for everyone who received it. Armand did not have the mind gift, he could not read thoughts, his own gift was deeper. He could sense things about a person that went beyond simple thought or even emotion; he saw what others could not see.

Only a few moments in Louis’ company, and already Armand had begun to know him. What he saw in the vampire fascinated Armand. He had suffered the first death, and had woken from it with the same burning hunger as all vampires. He had fed, and killed like everyone else. Yet, somehow, he had not died the second death. When Armand looked into his eyes, he could see Louis-- could see the living human spirit inside the vampire. It was not undamaged, not whole, but there it was. 

A vampire with a human soul.

How was it possible? Was it Louis guilt that allowed him to retain so much of his humanity? Was it the war that raged inside him? Was it his ever-breaking heart? The conflict between life and death that he fought every night of his life was the most basic of human struggles. Perhaps it was this. 

Whatever the cause, there was an irony in that human soul’s persistent survival. Louis had sought death, invited it, but all that came to him was immortality; and he found it in greater degree than any vampire Armand had seen in all his many years.

Stranger, almost, than that soul’s existence, was the way it touched Armand. Armand had come to looked at the world of humans and vampires as though through a pane of frosted glass, but somehow, this creature, this divided being that straddled life and death, was not out of reach. And Armand could see him more clearly than he had ever seen anything before.

Armand looked at Louis, and he saw an entire age in him. His disillusionment, his pain, his conflict. At war with the old and new alike, he seemed to Armand to personify the current period. Louis did not hear time’s relentless tattoo, thundering all around him, yet he felt it resonating in his bones and pulsing through him; and he danced, unknowingly, in accord. For the first time in all his years of spectating, Armand could see that the dance was beautiful.

He knew then that if he could touch Louis, he could touch the world. If he could love Louis and all that he was, could understand his conflict and learn his dance, Armand could love the world. He could live forever.

**Author's Note:**

> 1The poet he's talking about is Whitman. He's referring to this poem from Leaves of Grass:
> 
> A Noiseless Patient Spider
> 
> A noiseless patient spider,  
> I mark’d where on a little promontory it stood isolated,  
> Mark’d how to explore the vacant vast surrounding,  
> It launch’d forth filament, filament, filament, out of itself,  
> Ever unreeling them, ever tirelessly speeding them. 
> 
> And you O my soul where you stand,  
> Surrounded, detached, in measureless oceans of space,  
> Ceaselessly musing, venturing, throwing, seeking the spheres to connect them,  
> Till the bridge you will need be form’d, till the ductile anchor hold,  
> Till the gossamer thread you fling catch somewhere, O my soul.


End file.
